My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: Queen of Spain

I had the pleasure of meeting Queen of Spain Blog political blogger Erin Kotecki Vest on my last My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition. She only had 30 minutes to share since she was going live with her weekly show The Sunday Inquisition w/ the Queen of Spain from 7-9 pm pacific time. I'll talk more about that following my summary of our ooVoo chat. Erin was connecting from Detroit where she was visiting with family and also joining the call was Digitalsista Shireen who I had met earlier in the day and Jill Foster. This was my third ooVoo call of the day and I was back at home by then and eager to meet the Queen of Spain.

"Erin Kotecki Vest spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, Orlando and Detroit winning six Golden Mic Awards with LA news institution KFWB. She now serves as Political Director and Election 08 Producer for BlogHer.com as well as contributing regularly to the Huffington Post, MOMocrats.com, and her own site Queen of Spain Blog."

Since we only had a short time with Erin we mainly talked about her life changing Blogher interview with Obama. She wrote about it in a two part series on her blog here and here where she gives behind the scenes details of the experience, her emotional state and how she prepared for the interview that changed her life.

On her blog she said,

"I wasn’t supposed to be doing the interview."
"I shopped at the Eugene, Oregon Target at 8pm Friday night for camera-ready clothes, notecards, and hairspray."
"I met the Senator from Illinois in the hallway of Roseburg High School while he was on his way to use the rest room. I know this. He told me so."

Our ooVoo conversation started with Jill asking the Erin how she prepared. Erin said the Blogher community drafted collected the 12 questions which were not secret so there was no fear of being ambushed. Each candidate would have time to prepare and this made it easy for to do interview. She counted her blessings and didn't have to go crazy. The on-camera interview was conducted in Roseburg, Oregon, by Erin with input from Contributing Editor Kim Pearson. She got through 7 of the 12 questions in the 10 minutes and on her blog she said, "This interview was not a surprise investigation by us. We’ve had these questions on the record since the BlogHer conference last July. So I knew this was not going to be a ‘follow up question’ or ‘on the spot attack’ type of interview. That helped. Back in the day I would have been plotting 40 follow ups and 40 different takes on those follow ups depending on his answers."

I asked Erin of the politicians she's interview who seemed the most sincere. She said Obama was the most genuine she ever met, he's charismatic, he had no handlers, was not so scripted or protected with every word out of his mouth and that was a relief for her. Momocrats said when Obama speaks and does his "ums" he reminds you of that college professor that was a little absent minded, but you saw the wheels spinning, watched the gears go and you see how brilliant he is.

The blogging community is growing she said and high profile people like Michelle Obama are now blogging on Blogher. When asked how could McCain supporters could be engaged she said she's not sure how to get them to support Obama and she's not trying to change their minds. Her biggest worry is the undecided voters and independents.

On her blog she said, "I love being a blogger. I love being a blogher. I love that after I interviewed the man who very well could make history I could tell you this story, and scream and cry. Years ago I could never have done that." Now they call her for interviews and she doesn't wait their call. Although she said she's still hasn't heard from McCain's people.

Once again our ooVoo time was up and Erin had to go. Her humor, fun spirit and passion for the political process and citizen activism was a real inspiration and 30 minutes of conversation was not enough. So after our ooVoo chat ended I logged onto Erin's Sunday Inquisition show and couldn't help but notice that Jill and Digitalsista were there too.


The main topic of that broadcast was about Lee Stranahan and how he's been banned from posting at Daily Kos, a liberal political blog after he started talking about the John Edwards scandal which finally broke on mainstream news yesterday. There was a lively and energetic discussion and Stranahan joined to share his side of the story. He said has been doing short video parodies on YouTube since December and cross posting on Kos 2-3 months ago starting posting on Huffington post doing comedy. He's been looking at Edwards scandal and his post, Say It Ain't So, John -- Why Progressives Need To Get Out In Front Of The John Edwards Affair Rumors 180,000 views, went viral, hugely viral. He thought he made his point clear that he was a progressive democrat and wasn't prepared for all the harshness and extreme backlash.



Related links:

• BlogHer EXCLUSIVE: Barack Obama answers policy questions from women who blog (Video) | BlogHer
• Erin Kotecki Vest Meets Senator Barack Obama, Part One
• Erin Kotecki Vest Meets Senator Barack Obama, Part Two
• Erin Kotecki Vest - The Huffington Post
• Erin Kotecki Vest: Banning Bloggers -- I've Heard Enough Singing From the NetRoots
• My Left Wing:: Irrefutable Proof Of The John Edwards Scandal
• Lee Stranahan: John Edwards Needs To Stop Taking The Fall!

My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: In The Pink Texas & Every Dot Connects

As I mentioned in my last post, I participated in three separate My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition videoconferences last Sunday. For my second session I found myself back at the Starbucks in San Francisco using the T-Mobile Wifi and my trusty Macbook. I didn't mentioned earlier that I actually don't live in San Francisco but I was there early Sunday morning because my son and his band, Shatterfish, were playing at the San Francisco Marathon (view their Qik video here) and I was roadie, tour manager, tech support, driver and video broadcaster. But I found a local wireless hotspot close to where they were playing and was able to join the previous session with Matt Parker and this one hosted Eileen Smith and Mike Chapman. Also joining the conversation was Digitalsista Shireen Mitchell, founder and Executive Director of Digital Sisters/Sistas, Inc and author of the blog Women Wired In. Phillip Robertson from ooVoo joined briefly to assist with connectivity issues.

"Eileen Smith is the editor of texasmonthly.com and also the editor of a satirical political blog named In the Pink Texas." In the Pink Texas says, "She has an affinity for pinot and an irrational fear of breeders, orphans, Catholic nuns, sobriety, lactivists, miniskirts and speaking on panels. She tries to respond to all comments, especially the ones that refer to her as a sociopath."

Needless to day she offered great conversation and insights on the 2008 Presidential Campaign. On her blog, Eileen had this to say about participating on the ooVoo panel,"When my blog friend and yours, The Other Guy, started telling me about some new, exciting platform for online communications and digital media, I quickly said “unsubscribe” and hung up the phone. But then he told me it had something to do with a live video chat and I’m like, sign me up. Who am I to pass up yet another opportunity to embarrass myself and the entire staff of Texas Monthly?"

Joining Eileen as co-host was Mike Chapman who "has over two decades of experience in public relations and public affairs. Joining the Capitol Hill staff of Congressman J.J. "Jake" Pickle after college, he was mentored by one of the nation's most successful statesmen... He is a founding member of the Austin Social Media Club, the international Social Media Club, and a number of organizations with interests in online communications strategies and technologies."

On his blog Every Dot Connects, Mike wrote about the upcoming My ooVoo Day In The Pink by saying. "The Pink Lady and I don’t always agree and when we don’t, she’s always right. Well, except on a few issues and I won’t mention what they are... Here’s a hint, I supported Barack Obama and she still wants Hillary to take it to the convention. Other than that, we agree on everything. Politics can get really boring for normal people. Eileen gets that and makes the issues of the day fun. She isn’t Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert…she’s better. Recently, she posted about our upcoming panel, which just happens to be on Obama’s birthday (I thought you’d like that Eileen) and, once again, she cracked me up."

Once we all got connected, Mike started by talking about the power of the social media world and political activism. Instead of just telling our friends we can now tell the word through our blogs and that things news reporters wouldn't write about bloggers and commenters would. He went to Netroots Nation and said they were a very fervent group. Eileen added that there was no middle ground in Netroots Nation. Shireen said she went to Blogher and that Netroots has the view of being extermists but you also get a sense that they are bringing up things that people don't want to touch.

I admitted that I felt out of touch with the issues and that it had been several months since I sat down and read the paper. Most of time is spent in the tech blogosphere but joining these conversations helped me connect back to the political dialogue. We all agreed that the media distracts and that with the overall media coverage the extremes get media attention. Eileen pointed out that nobody is talking a economic plan.

We went on to talk about the Presidential campaign strategies. Mike thought that Obama is taking a risk by not committing to specifics and waiting for opponent to make a mistake. Reagan was the best at this. Not saying anything and looking presidential. Clinton tried but was not as successful. Shireen also thought that it's dangerous too and when you use surrogates you get caught in a bind. You're guilty by association and the media pounces on you. Which is what happened to Obama earlier in his campaign when sermons by his longtime Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright produced an explosion of controversy. (More on Huffington Post...)

Eileen said that candidates don't really control their campaigns anymore and the media is looking for candidates to slip up. Every politician need to be aware of the viral quality of negative stories and get into talking about real policies. They're trying to use old school public relations messaging but we're not putting up with it anymore. It will be history making on who handles it best.

Overall, it was a great conversation that ended too soon. I had to leave early to pick up my son and his band mates since the SF Marathon finished up early. Eileen and Mike had one more ooVoo chat scheduled the next day and I had one more myself later in the day with Queen of Spain. More on that in my next post.